2 Soldiers, Friends From Queens, Die on a 'Routine' Patrol in Iraq

By JAMES BARRON and KIRK SEMPLE; Stacy Albin contributed reporting for this article.

Published: March 5, 2005

They were both from Queens -- one a Muslim, the other a Buddhist. They became friends while they were reservists in training, before they were sent to Iraq as part of the deployment of New York's most storied National Guard unit, the First Battalion, 69th Infantry Regiment of Manhattan.

Specialist Azhar Ali, 27, of Flushing, and Specialist Wai Phyo Lwin, 27, of Douglaston, were members of the battalion's cadre of scouts, which undertook daring reconnaissance missions, often at night. The group was young, high-strung, idiosyncratic and tightly knit. The battalion's commander, Lt. Col. Geoffrey J. Slack, liked to refer to them as ''the Madhatters.''

The last mission of Specialists Ali and Lwin was relatively routine: a vehicle patrol of the troubled highway that runs between the airport and the Green Zone, a fortified area of government buildings.

On Wednesday, a roadside bomb went off as their Humvee was turning onto a bridge that crosses the airport road, destroying the vehicle and killing the two men instantly, Colonel Slack said in a telephone interview from Baghdad yesterday.

''They never knew what hit them,'' he said.

A third soldier in the Humvee, Sgt. Daniel P. Maiella, 30, of Brooklyn, was seriously wounded and was airlifted to a military hospital in Germany. ''He got away by the grace of God,'' Colonel Slack said.

Neither Specialist Ali nor Specialist Lwin was married or had children, military officials said. Colonel Slack said an interdenominational memorial service planned for Monday at a military base in Baghdad would include a Buddhist priest and an Islamic cleric.

The deaths brought to 12 the number of soldiers who have died in Task Force Wolfhound, a group of nearly 600 National Guardsmen from the battalion and other National Guard units who were deployed in October under the command of Colonel Slack.

Specialist Lwin's father, Thein Z. Lwin, said his son's death was the second loss the family had faced in recent weeks. Specialist Lwin's grandfather died in Myanmar, formerly Burma, and Specialist Lwin's mother, May Thi Kah, had just returned from the funeral when word came of Specialist Lwin's death.

''It's like a double tragedy for her,'' said Mr. Lwin, who had stayed in Myanmar on business but returned home when he learned that his son had been killed. ''I don't know how to soothe her.''

Mr. Lwin said that his son, who had attended Benjamin Cardozo High School in Queens, had wanted to be a soldier since he was a child. ''He kept asking us to let him go into the military,'' Mr. Lwin said.

He said that when his tour in Iraq was over, his son had planned to leave the military and go to college.

Until the news came, Mr. Lwin had been looking forward to seeing his son at the end of the month, when Specialist Lwin planned to visit New York on leave. Yesterday, Mr. Lwin was left with memories -- memories of singing, of playing the guitar. Specialist Lwin's favorite song was ''Stuck on You,'' by Lionel Richie.

Specialist Ali's brothers in Flushing -- his parents returned to their native Pakistan some years ago -- reacted with disbelief to the knock at their door from military personnel whose mission was to tell them their brother was dead. The brothers had spoken with him by cellphone only hours before he died.

His brother Mazhar, 23, said Specialist Ali had asked for video games. Mazhar Ali said he had planned to send him some new titles, along with contact lenses.

The Alis said their dealings with the military since learning of their brother's death on Wednesday evening had been problematic. Another brother, Zulfiqak Ali, 33, said the family wanted Specialist Ali's body sent to Pakistan for burial there.

They said that although they gave the soldiers at the door their father's telephone number in Karachi, he heard nothing official until yesterday. Zulfiqak Ali said there had been a series of phone calls between military officials and the family in Queens, who reiterated that under their tradition, Specialist Ali should be buried within 24 hours of his death.

He said that late Friday in Karachi, someone called and told his father to go to the United States Embassy to fill out papers. But the caller also told Mr. Ali that the embassy was closing for the weekend and suggested that he go there on Monday.

A telephone call to the Army's public affairs office was not returned last night.

The family said Specialist Ali, the second youngest of nine children, went to New York when he was 14. He graduated from John Bowne High School in Flushing and joined the 69th about six years ago. After 9/11, they said, he patrolled Grand Central Terminal and was sent to Korea.

A cousin, Sunny Sharif, said Specialist Ali was a quiet, dedicated soldier. If a call came for an assignment, Mr. Sharif said: ''He never said no. He pulled on his pants and he was out.''

Mazhar Ali said that after leaving the military, his brother hoped to become a New York City police officer.

Specialists Ali and Lwin were the first task force soldiers to die since the battalion began patrolling the airport road in early February, an assignment that had elicited the scorn of Colonel Slack, who felt it was tedious and not challenging enough for his battalion.

In interviews last week, he said the new mission was boring and he mocked the highway's reputation as the most dangerous road in Iraq.

Yesterday, though, he was humbled. ''I'm going to have to eat my words,'' he said.

Colonel Slack said the attackers had presumably planted the bomb during a brief interval between two passing patrols. ''It was what we call, 'drop and pop': They drove up, dropped the I.E.D.,'' he said, using the abbreviation for improvised explosive device. ''It could've happened to anybody at any time, anywhere.''

''The battalion is bummed out,'' he added, ''but we've had so many casualties that we're staring to get'' The colonel paused, searching for the right word. ''I guess 'hardened.' They suffer, they grieve, they're unhappy and they know this is the cost of doing business over here.''

The battalion spent its first three months in Iraq providing security in Taji, a region northwest of Baghdad, where it met stiff enemy resistance and suffered most of its casualties. Its relocation to Baghdad and its new assignment -- to safeguard an eight-kilometer stretch of the airport road, known among American officials as Route Irish -- came as a relief to the soldiers, even if the road was infamous for ambushes, bombings and kidnappings.

Before Wednesday, a battalion patrol had been hit by at least one other roadside bomb in Baghdad but had suffered no casualties. Several other bombs had been discovered before they could do any harm.

Photos: Azhar Ali, top left, and Wai Phyo Lwin, both of Queens, were killed Wednesday in Iraq. Yesterday, three of Specialist Ali's brothers, from left, Zulfiqak, Iftckar and Waqar, were among family gathered in Flushing. (Photo by Uli Seit for The New York Times)(pg. B6)